


Frangipani

by salineshots



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Bonding Moments, Canon Compliant, Fluff, Gen, Some Mild Angst, background klance, character injury, hunk is a sweetie, season 6 and after
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-04
Updated: 2018-09-04
Packaged: 2019-07-06 21:13:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15894258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salineshots/pseuds/salineshots
Summary: Hunk wanted to stay home from the outset of these misadventures, and sometimes he's too afraid to hope that it's still there waiting for him. On their journey back to Earth, he realizes that all any of them want is to go home.  Follows season 6.This is a gift for my darling friendallow-me-to-speak!! She is one of the kindest, most talented people I've ever met, and when I first started writing for this fandom, she quickly became one of the best friends I've ever had. She's an incredible artist so go check her out!! She loves Hunk, and I love Hunk, so this is a Hunk oneshot for her. Thank you for everything ❤️I want to thank my friendgreenteafiendfor helping me with this story! She inspired so many ideas for this fic and helped me with the details of Hunk's Samoan background, and she's an awesome writer!!





	Frangipani

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DanniMcN](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DanniMcN/gifts).



_frangipani, plumeria: positivity, new life, beauty, hospitality, springtime_

 

* * *

 

 

The loss of the castle didn’t begin to sink in until the third planet they camped on.

It had been home. Hunk had missed Samoa when he had taken his full ride to Galaxy Garrison. He had missed the Garrison when he had been pulled off Earth entirely and loaded into a flying space castle. And now that his back ached from the extended road trip in Yellow, he missed that castle.

He had lived in a castle for well over a year, and he wasn't convinced he had ever taken the time to love it properly. It still felt like an extended vacation where someday they would return to the Castle of Lions. They would be able to recharge their lions properly, eat some horrible food goo if fresh ingredients were low, and collapse on the oversized sectional in the lounge to make a game of telling the worst puns. They would have the comfort of the bedrooms they had grown into. They would have the option to wormhole where they needed to go instead of hopping from one solar system to another in search of Voltron’s allies. They would have the echoing space of the castle halls, the legroom of a city instead of an RV.

Hunk still felt that way, even as he held the diamond the castle had left behind. It was unrecognizable as home. It was just a rock. It nearly matched his body temperature, and it barely weighed anything in his palm.

“This is like, the first law of anything. Mass doesn’t just disappear. Volume decreases, density increases, mass stays the same. This thing should weigh thousands of tons, but it’s barely a couple pounds.”

“One-point-six-six-four kilograms,” Pidge mumbled around a pen. “And its mass isn't changing, but it's releasing a slight amount of heat.”

“Right? It's warm!” This was an affront to the universe. Through all of the other nonsense that their magic lions dragged them through, the laws of conservation of mass and energy were never betrayed. Mostly. Where quintessence wasn't involved. Hunk set the jewel down on their workspace: a table pulled out in the small, cluttered cargo bay of the Green Lion. It was Pidge’s lab until further notice. Allura, Coran, and Lance had joined them for the day’s analysis. Romelle was hanging back by the doorway, but sometimes she would squint past someone’s shoulder or arm to get a view of the jewel at a safe distance. “Where’s it getting energy if it’s not burning it off?”

Allura hadn’t looked away from the thumb-sized stone for an hour. Her arms were crossed over her chest, less firm than her usual stance and only half a step from hugging herself, but her brow was furrowed and the shadows under her eyes were deeper than ever.

“It seems contained now,” she said slowly, voice creaking like a stiff muscle, “but it may be an after-effect from the rift. Perhaps it’s radiating leftover quintessence from the reality tear.”

“Does quintessence follow any kind of quantifiable patterns?” Pidge made a note on a close enough equivalent to a legal pad, so full of scribbled measurements and theories that it hurt Hunk’s eyes to look at it. “Something we can actually use to, I don’t know, plan on how to handle this thing?”

That pushed Allura’s frown into a scowl.

“It’s not useful to think of quintessence as a subject of traditional scientific study,” Allura answered. Her voice was on an edge this time. “Even the most advanced alchemists in the history of the universe were only scratching the surface of its true nature.”

Pidge didn’t bother to look up. “Just because we don’t understand it doesn’t mean it’s magic.”

Allura took a breath so deep that it was nearly a hiss. Hunk took a subtle, sliding step to the left to give her some more room.

Lance was the one to step in. He let his palms rest on the table, and he leaned over the jewel to look down at it while he spoke lightly.

“Well, whatever you nerds say it is, Allura’s the one with the most experience with magic diamonds. And since weighing it for the fifteenth time is just making us mad, I’m gonna trust Allura’s judgement.”

“Its molecular structure isn’t even carbon. It’s not a diamond,” Pidge argued, but at least Allura was smiling. “And it still doesn't explain the missing mass.”

“Maybe parts of the castle were burned off as energy,” Hunk reasoned. “Or maybe most of it didn’t make it back from the rift.”

Allura’s lips pursed.

“Or maybe it just got lighter,” Hunk offered just as quickly. Allura didn't seem reassured, but Lance gave him an encouraging glance.

“I mean. It could've,” Lance said with a shrug. Bless his heart, Hunk would never understand how Lance could rearrange the fundamental laws of physics to make room for his optimism. “We can't tell it that it can't do something. It's a magic space diamond.”

“Stop calling it a diamond, Lance.” At least the bite in Pidge’s voice had softened into fatigue. She sighed and sat forward, and she dropped her face into her hands. “You know what? Whatever, sure. Magic diamond. And Allura says it's stable.” She let her hand fall back down to the pen on the table, and she scratched a slow, resigned line through one of her notes. “I guess that's all we have to know for now.”

The contemplation over the not-diamond devolved after that. Allura picked it up before she excused herself from the Green Lion, and no one argued her right as its keeper. Minutes later, only Pidge and Hunk were left. Pidge scowled at her notes until Hunk reached over to pat her comparatively tiny shoulder.

“Are we even sure if it’s the castle or not?” he asked.

“Same energy signature as the castle,” Pidge sighed. “Hints of Balmeran crystal, plus whatever weird Altean tech Green’s telling me is so familiar.”

Pidge was one of Hunk’s closest friends - one of the best he’d ever had - and he understood how her mind worked. He knew her strictly logical way of thinking and how it met her emotional way of reacting, and he knew that this _lack_ of logic was making her frustrated. If she didn’t understand how the situation worked, she couldn’t control it. Of all the challenges they had been through as paladins, understanding had never been a challenge for Pidge before.

“That’s what Yellow told me, too. He recognized it.”

The grimace that came over Pidge’s face in that moment was worse than all of the rest of the afternoon’s frustration.

“We used to live there,” she mumbled. Hunk understood her meaning with a sharp pang in his stomach.

“I mean, yeah,” he said searchingly, “but we still _have_ it, at least.”

All he got out of Pidge after that was a stiff shrug and a mumble of, “I guess.” With nothing else to say, he patted her shoulder one more time and stepped out from Green's cargo bay and down to the planet’s surface.

Kharakaziil was less arid than the worlds they had stopped on before. It wasn't exactly civilized, being too far out of the way of the larger trade routes and travel hubs of intergalactic society to attract much attention to itself, but it was lively. The trees were tall, the sky was a spectrum of ever-shifting violet, and the native flora were mostly edible. Finally, they had something to eat along with their cans of concentrated goo. With Pidge devoted to mulling over what technology they had to work with, Keith and Krolia off hunting in the woods for more food, Allura, Coran and Romelle by the Blue Lion speaking together in a language Hunk didn’t even _understand_ , and Shiro on strict bedrest by order of all of them, Lance was the one Hunk found by the fire. The fire itself was more for light and functionality rather than heat; their little planet was plenty warm enough already. It was late in the day, judging by the slightly darker shade of purple-blue in the sky, and Lance seemed to share Hunk’s idea that it was getting close to dinnertime. The new Red Paladin was sitting cross-legged on the ground in his black undersuit, peeling the tough inedible skin off of one of the local vegetables with a small knife. They had foraged a decent pile of them earlier, but they still had to cut them up and cook them.

Hunk sat down beside him and picked up a knife of his own. Lance perked up once he was given some company, but they gave the quiet a minute to settle in and the pile of tough skins between them to grow a little taller.

“So, the castle’s a rock,” Hunk mused. Lance took in and let out a deep breath.

“Thanks for going easy on Allura,” was Lance’s answer. Hunk’s perfect spiral of vegetable skin broke in the middle, and he had to frown at the imperfect record in his peeling technique for the night.

“Well, duh. I’m not a monster,” Hunk sighed, and he continued his work, peeling the skin in a circuit from where he’d left off. “The way she looks at it, man. But at least she still gets to take it with her.”

“I don’t know.” Lance’s voice had gone soft, and as thoughtful as he looked, his peeling was _horrible_. He was marring the tubor with uneven slices, like he wasn’t paying attention to how much food he was wasting while he hacked away at it. “It’s not like she gets to take it with her. It’s not _there_. She grew up in that castle, right? And now she could wear it around her neck. That’s got to be terrifying.”

“But it’s still a memento,” Hunk offered, as if he could make the situation more positive by framing it that way. When he couldn’t take it anymore, he groaned and held out his own work to show Lance. “Stop cutting so much off. You’re killing me. Like this, anchor your thumb on the back of the knife.”

Lance grumbled something, but he did his best to follow Hunk’s instructions. His hands were clumsy and unfamiliar with the motions, but Hunk could see him trying. After a moment of concentrating, Lance spoke up again.

“A memento’s not enough, though. Like, imagine if my house key was all I had left of my home. It’s almost enough for _now_ , because I know it’s still out there,” he explained. “But if I knew home was _gone_? It would kill me.”

Hunk’s home had Samoan beaches in plain view on three sides. For a cold moment, his mind stammered in fear around an image: a Galra craft, flying too low, kicking up the waves and searching for a paladin’s loved ones. The ocean rising up in a torrent, climbing high over the beaches until it fell upon the town under it. The water swallowing the house, the chickens, the frangipani, and sweeping it all away before the ship would even bother to open fire.

If Hunk had only been left with a piece of it - the first item that came to mind was his mother’s favorite fan, woven from flax leaves and delicately dyed - it would leave him starved for the rest of his home forever.

“Yeah,” he agreed quietly. “Yeah, I get you.”

“We still have homes to come back to.” Lance kept his voice soft and his eyes on the plant in his hand. Neither of them said anything else until the whole pile of food was peeled and ready to cook.

 

Most of the navigation was managed by Allura, Coran, Krolia, and Keith. The first three were the most familiar with space travel, Krolia had Earth’s relative location in the universe committed to heart, and Keith was the stubborn driving force that found the fastest routes through each leg of the journey. Keith pushed them an extra system over before the five of them touched down; the lions needed more time to recharge, and the fresh air of a hospitable world was good for all of them.

It would take too long to make it back to Earth at this rate. They all knew it. Their goal had to be to find an energy source to charge the lions, perhaps enough to send Voltron into a hyperjump, and hopefully to find some of Voltron’s allies. In the meantime, they were limping along. It was frustrating to all of them, but Hunk was picking up on Keith’s frustration especially. Keith wasn’t snapping at anyone, but his voice was tighter, more irritable without the hostility. When they landed on Wilerid, which was hotter and drier than Hunk liked, they stopped to settle in, scope out the area, and take turns working and getting some sleep. The first comfortable thing their little caravan did was on their second night there, when they all huddled into Yellow’s cargo bay to sprawl out and eat together in the conditioned air.

Lance complained the loudest, equal parts genuine and purposefully making himself a target for everyone’s good-natured teasing. Once Lance had set a more relaxed mood, Hunk snorted and decided to spare a small portion of what dessert they had with everyone, so they had little handmade candy bars to go with their meal of B12-vitamin flavored goo and filtered water.

Pidge sweat terribly and was happy to lie out on the cold metal floor, and Allura put her hair up in a frazzled but too-tired-to-care bun to keep it off her neck. Coran sat close by and made sure that Allura was eating her full portion of goo, and Romelle had made herself at home talking with Krolia and Shiro. It was strange to watch Krolia tend to Shiro, who was all wan smiles, sunken eyes, and slow movements, without Keith right beside them.

Where _was_ Keith?

Hunk frowned and looked around until he found the bowl of food he had set aside for Keith. He left it on one of the many crates in the bay, and he took the piece of candy and a bottle of water before stepping down the ramp of the cargo bay and onto the compact earthen surface of the desert. Somehow, this was one of the more temperate regions of the planet.

The air wasn’t as fresh, and the sky wasn’t as bright as their last stop. Everything on Wilerid seemed grey, from the monotone, cloudless sky with a pale speck of sun, down to the cracked, ashen ground, and somehow it was still hateful and sweltering. There were scattered forests and grasslands across the region, allowing for enough oxygen and nitrogen to breathe, but their lions’ systems had warned them that the local wildlife was neither friendly nor edible. Sadly, this relatively cool, lonely spot in the desert was the best option for them. Hunk would have preferred the more vibrantly tropical planet a system behind, but Keith was right; they were headed for a possible rebel location, and this would cut off a decent portion of their journey. Even a couple of days on the fast-orbiting Wilerid would ultimately bring them to an ideal travel position, whereas the more comfortable planet would have set them back. On the flat surface of their temporary home, there was only one sign of life other than the light and faint chatter from Yellow - the bay to the Black Lion was open as well. Hunk sighed and crossed the circle of their resting lions, and he called for Keith while he stepped up the ramp.

“In here,” Keith’s voice answered, followed by a short, muffled curse and a clank of metal. Hunk snorted and followed the sounds through Black’s more spacious cargo bay. He found Keith underneath the single healing pod in the paladins’ possession, which he had propped up on two crates at either end. He was lying under it with a panel cover, two differently sized wrenches, a rag, and a small Altean cleaning device (it was canned air. Just admit it, Coran) set aside on the floor next to him.

“Does the cryopod need an oil change?” Hunk asked innocently, and Keith didn’t seem to get the joke. He bent his arm to push his hair out of his eyes, seemingly not for the first time, and he spared Hunk a polite glance from the floor before continuing his work. He seemed to be reaching into the machine and digging deeper to fix a piece of wiring.

“Coran showed me how to do some of the maintenance,” Keith explained. “It needs a lot of upkeep, ‘specially without the automated castle systems to back it up. Have to clean it, restart a couple auxiliary systems…” He dropped back into a mumble, and Hunk listened to him tweak something that sounded small and plastic.

“Well, you wanna take a break? We’re eating dinner.” It hardly earned the title _dinner_ , but Hunk would have to take that insult for now.

Keith was quiet for a couple of seconds. The rattling sounds continued, and then a soft, “Not hungry. Maybe later,” followed.

Hunk understood the frustration of being interrupted in the middle of repairs, but Keith had been tense for days. He let out a long-suffering sigh and sat down beside one of the crates propping up the pod.

“Dude, please come eat. You’ve got us kind of worried, and we like your company.”

That actually got Keith to turn his head an inch. Hunk caught a flicker of hopeful confusion in his eyes, and just as quickly, Keith furrowed his brow and looked back up at the panel. He was only in his work pants and his now ill-fitting t-shirt, the latter in particular dark with sweat and sticking to his chest.

“Keith, seriously. How long have you been working?”

“Had to fix the water filter,” Keith mumbled, and he growled when a droplet of something fell from the pod and onto his cheek. He wiped at it with the back of his glove and only smeared it. “And Black needed some work.”

Keith said it like that was a short to-do list, but Hunk knew how tedious the filters were, and he knew the hours of labor required for ‘some work’ on a lion. It was even more intensive without the castle systems to help out.

“When’s the last time you _slept_?” Hunk pressed, aghast. “You didn’t take a break yesterday, did you?”

Keith scowled at something in the panel and shrugged mutedly. Something in the pod clicked into place.

“I dozed a little on the way here. Black took the wheel.”

“You mean the fifteen minutes you mumbled whenever we talked to you?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“How are you even alive?”

Keith finally snapped something shut in the panel, and he pushed himself out from under the pod to sit up and tap at a screen on the machine’s side. It hummed and the screen brightened, and Keith engrossed himself in a diagnostics run.

“Look, the pod needs maintenance.” Keith didn’t sound annoyed in the least, but his voice was weary. “It’s the only one we have. Shiro needs it. And if anyone else gets hurt and needs a turn in it-- It has to keep working.”

“Keith, you’re going to put _yourself_ in that pod.”

“I need everyone to make it home.”

It was the first time that day Keith had elevated his voice even slightly, and the words caught Hunk off guard. Keith's scraped fingers stopped tapping on the screen. The silence in the cargo hold was strained enough to make Hunk’s throat tighten.

Keith gave in an inch. His hands fell from the screen to his knees, and he looked back at Hunk where they were both seated, wearing exhausted stress all over his face. His voice went quiet again.

“I’m getting everyone home.”

“Not if you work yourself to death.” Keith couldn't muster up another protest, and Hunk held out the candy bar to him. Keith's hands were dirty with grease and metal, and he hesitated, but he took the candy by the paper wrapping and took a small, mollified bite. “Better, right? You need some nutrition, too. There’s a bowl of goo for you in Yellow. Goo-trition.”

Keith huffed and smiled, and it was close enough to a laugh for Hunk to smile, too.

“In a minute,” Keith said, but he did seem less closed off. “I wanna see what the system scan says.”

If that was all it took to calm Keith down and let him eat, Hunk would sit with him through it. He settled in and leaned his back against one of the nearby crates, and he waited while Keith reviewed the reports on the cryopod’s functions. Hunk didn’t let the silence set in for long.

“We’ll make it home,” he told Keith.

Keith looked over his shoulder at him, tapped the screen again, and shifted over to sit next to Hunk with a sigh. The screen showed the slow journey of a progress bar.

“Yeah,” Keith agreed quietly, and he took another bite of the candy bar. Hunk passed him the water, and Keith thanked him with a grunt.

“Where’s the first place you wanna go when we get there?” Hunk asked out of curiosity.

“The Garrison?” Keith gave Hunk a cautious look, testing the waters of a trick question.

“No, I mean-- Obviously, the Garrison,” Hunk sighed. “Get our important universe-saving stuff done. But after that. Any family you wanna see?”

The caution in Keith's eyes crumbled. Hunk didn't know what to do with the suddenly small, vulnerable look that crossed his face, and then Keith was composed again, staring at his hands.

“My whole family’s on this planet with me.”

It sounded like a confession. Hunk could only study Keith's profile and weigh the fact that Keith didn't just mean Krolia.

Beyond that, Keith had no one on Earth waiting for him to come back.

“Oh,” he said while he reached for better words. He didn't find any.

“Yeah.” Keith cleared his throat and shrugged. “What about you? Where’s your family?”

Hunk’s chest filled with warmth. If Keith really wanted to give him the slightest excuse to talk about his family, Hunk would take it and run.

“Samoa, on Upolu,” he replied. “It’s a lot quieter than the Garrison, that's for sure.”

“Samoa?” Keith showed a twitch of curious smile. He was subdued, but Hunk had always known Keith wasn't particularly good with people, and he was asking and encouraging him anyway. It was nice.

“Yeah. Right on the beach. You can see the water from almost every window,” Hunk said proudly. “Pretty traditional, extended family. My dad raised me working on engines, and my mom and my uncle taught me how to cook, and my brothers have their kids-- Did you know I'm an uncle?”

“You're an uncle?” Keith’s hint of a smile turned into a grin.

“Yeah! I'm like, the awesome uncle who can carry kids on my shoulders and fix all their toys.” Hunk faltered. His elation turned soft and bitter, but he kept his smile in place. “I miss them,” he said quietly.

He found himself staring somewhere across the cargo bay, but he still felt Keith's eyes on him. Hunk cleared his throat and moved on.

“So when we get back,” Hunk declared, “I’ll drag you over to my house and make you eat all our home cooking. Do you like pineapple?”

Keith laughed. His face didn't look so grey and thin anymore.

“I've never had it.”

“Wait. What the hell?” Hunk burst into laughter and sat up straight. “You've never eaten pineapple before?”

“I grew up in a desert!”

“They have pineapple in Arizona, Keith!”

Keith snorted. “They have canned beans and powdered milk in Arizona.”

“Oh, gross.”

“Powdered milk with _sulfur water_ ,” Keith elaborated, twisting the knife. Hunk gagged and shook his head.

“Nope. This is not something I'm willing to hear. We have a lifetime of good food to catch you up on.” Hunk shook his head and stood up, and Keith rocked up onto his feet after him. Hunk glanced from Keith to the screen beside the cryopod, doubting for a moment that Keith would really follow his advice. “You coming to eat?” he asked anyway, hopeful.

Keith took a quick look at the screen and shrugged. He held the bottle of water and the candy bar in his hands, letting them hover awkwardly, and shrugged.

“It'll be here when I get back.” Keith managed another small smile for Hunk, like he was still trying to convince himself, but that alone left Hunk beaming.

“Pineapple pie later,” Hunk promised, and Keith jumped when he patted his back on their way down the ramp. “For now, goo. Then you can show me what all this maintenance is about.”

 

Their next host planet was just as uninhabited as the last four, but this one was much lovelier than Wilerid. It was warm in its own softer, sunny way, and after camping out in the lifeless grey desert, Hunk thought their new spot between the edge of a green and yellow forest and the shore of a clear lake was well-deserved.

The same moment that Coran declared the vegetation edible and the water potable, everyone seemed to have a direction: Keith grabbed a bag and started off into the woods to find something to eat, quickly followed by Krolia. Allura stopped to study a particularly leafy vine growing up the side of a tree, making a comment over her shoulder to Coran about medicine. Pidge stayed in Green to run another scan of the immediate area and avoid the local allergens. Shiro and Romelle started rolling out supplies from the lions to make camp.

And Lance was hopping out of the last of his armor, abandoning his flightsuit on the beach, and diving into the water in nothing but his boxers.

“Lance, are you crazy?!” Hunk shouted after him. He dropped his armful of to-be firewood and darted to the water’s edge, and Lance resurfaced over twenty feet out, smiling rapturously and leaning his head back while he tread in place.

“The water’s _so good_.” There was a rich, deep laugh in Lance’s voice that made the system’s sun shine brighter.

“Oh, good,” Hunk snapped, raising his voice enough to be heard over the distance. “I bet the monsters in it are having a great spa day.”

“I did a scan already, Hunk,” Lance called back. “No monsters. What am I? Some kind of amateur?”

“Did you remember to scan for microscopic waterborne parasites? Because those are my favorite.”

“Got you covered.” Lance laughed and swam a circuiting lap, just reasonably close enough to the shore.

It wasn’t like the sunken pools hidden in the thick of the islands like little green treasures. It was slightly too temperate and the trees weren’t green enough, and the flowers along the bank were small and purple rather than the vibrant scarlet hibiscus, or Hunk’s favorite yellow and white frangipani, but the water was clear and the sand was warm. The sun was yellow, and his friend’s laughter was loud.

Hunk’s mouth screwed into a grimace, and he looked back at Shiro for some excuse to stay stern. Shiro had paused in the middle of opening a crate to look at them, and his eyes stopped on Hunk with a barely muffled grin.

“I think what Lance is trying to say,” Shiro suggested brightly, “is he could use some help diving for those mollusks Coran mentioned.” That was punctuated by a splash out by the water and a joyful cry from Lance.

“Hunk, there’s so much cool shit out here!”

When had venturing out into an alien lake become the closest thing Hunk had to coming home?

He set aside his armor more neatly than Lance had, and he took the time to find his actual swimming trunks.

The water didn't smell like salt, and Hunk couldn't hear the playful squeals of his nieces and nephews behind him, but there was water around him and sand under his feet. He waded in, and the enjoyment seeped in tentatively. He didn't have to wait long before Lance was bolting through the water towards him, and when he surfaced to stand in front of him, he shook out his hair and let it stick out wherever it pleased.

“Hunk, look what I found!” Lance held out a smooth shell the size of his palm. It was ridged along one side and iridescent in the sunlight, such a similar life form to those on Earth, and it was the pride and joy of Lance’s whole day.

“Dude.” Hunk’s eyes brightened. “I can make clam stew. Actual food. We don't have to eat _any_ goo today.”

“ _Finally_.” Lance beamed, deposited the shell on a flat rock by the shore, and dove back into the water. Laughing, Hunk followed.

He had missed swimming. Hunk didn't ever let himself think about it for too long, but the Pacific had him homesick. He was never as adventurous as Lance, and Hunk didn't like to go anywhere he couldn't see the shore, but being in the water was familiar and soothing. His brothers would tease him for not wanting to go all the way to the reef, but Hunk was perfectly happy to stay in the shallows and watch the kids.

He wanted to sit on the porch and listen to the ocean while the sunset turned it orange. The sighing waves sounded the same in the morning as they did at night.

As it was, this planet had gravity approximately equal to Earth's, and the push and pull of the water was just the same.

Hunk would have been happy to stay with his head above the water, but Lance instantly made a game of peeking up from the surface several feet out of Hunk’s reach and squirting mouthfuls of water at him. He really had no choice. Hunk _had_ to push forward and catch Lance by the ankles. Lance screamed with laughter, flailing and splashing to try and escape, and almost kicked Hunk in the head. Hunk dragged him in anyway like a caught fish, foisted Lance up with both arms, and threw him back over the surface of the water. Lance’s squawk was cut short by the unforgiving _smack_ of a belly flop.

Behind him, Hunk could hear Shiro laughing himself into a coughing fit. Hunk grinned and dove in after Lance.

They swam deeper into the lake and tagged each other’s shins, but soon, their game of rude underwater gestures and ineffectively throwing rocks at each other turned into a more cooperative treasure hunt. Hunk found a particularly shiny rock, and though he knew it wouldn’t be useful in any practical sense, he liked it. Lance found an aquatic plant with long white coils, and he exercised appropriate caution and didn’t touch it. After they resurfaced for a fresh lungful of air, Lance led the way back down, and Hunk followed him past a slight ridge along the rocks. In the soft, filtered light that flickered with the surface, Hunk took in the sight of the lakebed, silt and weeds and rocks, with hundreds of shells tucked away just conspicuously enough.

The two of them gathered up armfuls of the shells. Hunk found the largest of the oyster-like creatures, and Lance widened his eyes and showed him an “OK” with his fingers for approval. They scared off tiny alien fish on their way back up, and then they were making their awkward, burdened, victorious way back to shore.

They decided that they had pillaged enough, and the two of them sat out on the large flat rock jutting out from the shore to sort their findings. Lance came back with a couple of tool knives, and the two of them only needed a moment to translate how to open mollusks to this alien version of them.

“I hope they taste like oysters,” Lance sighed. “Makes me hungry for paella.”

“Why wouldn’t they?” Hunk brought an open shell closer to his face, and he furrowed his brow. “It smells like an oyster. And like… something.”

“Something?” Lance laughed. “Like what?”

“Like-- I don’t know! Mountain Dew?”

“Oh my god.” Lance broke down into giggles, hard enough that he had to set down the knife. “ _Mountain Dew_.”

“Hey, it should taste fine for space clams,” Hunk snorted, and he picked up the largest shell he had found. With some patience and a steady knife, it wasn’t difficult to pry it open. While he began to cut the meat of it out into one side of the shell, a glint of light made him stop. “Holy crap.”

“Hm?” Lance leaned forward to see, and Hunk carefully cut out his find from the meat in the shell. He picked the pearl up between his fingers, soft white-yellow and roughly the size of the last knuckle of his thumb. “Oh my god, it’s a space pearl. It’s huge.”

Hunk rolled the little stone between his fingertips, studying its smooth surfaces, and smiled. “Never found a freshwater pearl before.”

“It’s seriously beautiful,” Lance gushed, and he was suddenly sitting up on his knees. When the forest crackled with footsteps, they both looked back to see Krolia, Keith, and the wolf returning. “Hey, look what Hunk found!”

Krolia was busy with what looked like a large buck slung over her shoulders, but Keith stepped closer. The bag over his back was full, and there was a quiet, confident security on his face, the kind that came with knowing that his family wasn’t going to starve.

“What’s up?”

Hunk held up the pearl to show him, and Keith’s eyebrows arched. He looked to the open shells and back to Hunk’s hand.

“It’s yellow.” Keith sounded surprised.

“Right?” Hunk grinned and stared at the pearl. He could feel the pride radiating from his cheeks. “Freshwater pearls on Earth are usually pink or something. Yellow and gold are pretty rare.”

“What are you gonna do with it?” Keith asked.

“Keep it, definitely,” Hunk chuckled, but he took a moment to consider. “Make a necklace for my mom. Probably keep the shells, too.”

Keith smiled. “That sounds nice.”

“What did you bring us, Keith?” Lance sat up on the balls of his feet to bring himself closer to the bag, and Keith huffed, swinging it over his shoulder to set it at the edge of the flat rock and open it. He reached in and pulled out what looked like a spherical rock. “Are you serious? You're gonna feed us rocks?”

Keith gave him a sharply unamused look, and then he brought the object down on the edge of the flat rock hard enough to split it clean in half. He held eye contact with Lance, lifted one half of the sweet-smelling fruit to his lips, and drank from the bright red juice inside, not bothering to wipe a stray drop from his chin. He left both halves on the rock, hauled the bag onto his shoulder again, and turned around and walked back toward camp.

Lance’s face was frozen in shock. Hunk nearly wept with laughter.

“Dude, you look like a ghost just slapped you,” Hunk wheezed. Lance found it in himself to shut his jaw and fix Hunk with an undignified frown.

“I mean, he doesn't have to go all… wilderness survival man,” Lance stammered.

“I think your word was 'grizzled.’”

“ _Hunk!_ ” Lance whined, and Hunk had to dodge a projectile wad of leaves grabbed from an overhanging branch. He didn't try too hard, though, and he only laughed harder when one of the leaves stuck to his cheek for a second too long. “We’re changing the subject! Right now! How are things with Shay?”

“Shay?” Hunk’s laughter barked in surprise. “Why are we talking about Shay all of a sudden?”

“Revenge,” Lance said, like this was natural and fair. “You tease me, I tease you.”

“Sure, sure. So, besides the part about how I haven't spoken to her in three decaphoebs…?” Hunk intended to keep his playful smile in place, but it was a challenge once those words were out.

“Makes it all the more romantic,” Lance insisted. “She's out there pining for her Yellow Paladin, and when you see her again you'll get to give her this sweet-ass speech about your feelings, made more tender over the years you've spent apart.”

“Lance, are you a poet?”

“Sometimes.”

Hunk smiled and shook his head. “Well, let's say I _did_ like her - and I'm not saying I _do_ , so no teasing - she's had a few years now to move on. There's probably some really cool rock dude who, I don't know, flies her to all the cool places she wants to see. You know she'd never seen the ocean? I mean. She probably has by now. Decaphoebs and all. But I'm just saying, there's no way she's waited around for just… some guy with a giant cat.”

Lance nodded too grimly to be serious. “Right. There's no way. Lucky for her, there's this guy who actually saved her whole planet and flies the one and only Yellow Lion, and oh, he's handsome and sweet and _crazy_ about her.”

“I am not!” Hunk put a defensive hand over his collar.

“Hunk, if I hear about when you two watched the sunrise together one more time, I'm going to vomit candy and rainbows.”

“I just think it’d be presumptuous of me to hope she’d wait for me or something,” Hunk admitted.

“Well, by the same token, you can't assume she’s just found someone else before you know for sure,” Lance reminded him. “That's just making an excuse not to hope.”

“I shouldn't assume she likes me, either.”

Lance cocked an eyebrow at him.

“She _doesn’t_ ,” Hunk insisted.

“Hunk, my buddy, my man, you are way too smart to be this dumb.” Lance picked up half of the fruit Keith had left for them, and he took a taste of it. It left his lips red, and it was sweet enough to make him smile. “Besides. Whether she's seen an ocean yet or not, she hasn't seen Earth’s.”

Hunk cradled the pearl in the palm of his hand, and he turned his head to look back out at the water. With the daylight fading and turning the sky pink, the lake was almost the right color.

 

As much of a homebody as he was, Hunk was starting to enjoy some facets of their little roadtrip. They hadn't found any way to communicate with Voltron’s allies yet, and they hadn't so much as made contact with the Blade of Marmora or anyone who might know where Matt Holt was. They hadn't made contact with _anyone_ since learning how long they had been gone. In the wake of that expansive, crushing loneliness and the constant reminders of what a huge and empty place the universe was, Hunk was finding his coping tactics. Not least of these was a mental scrapbook. He had to document their adventures, after all.

There were plenty of things on their latest planet to 'scrapbook.’ The trees were turning red and left a sea of dry leaves on the forest floor, and a variety of flowers still found the energy to bloom. Chains of tiny red blossoms hung straight down from the trees’ branches, and tall bushes presented clusters of golden flowers the size of Hunk’s head. The petals seemed to glitter whenever the shifting branches sent light their way, and on closer inspection, Hunk was perplexed to find their texture almost glassy.

“They're lovely, aren't they?”

Hunk jumped at Allura’s voice, and she laughed and stepped up beside him, reaching out to touch the plant.

“They're called _kookueyri_. They're quite a long way from their home planet. It's one of the more invasive species in the universe.” There was a fondness in her voice, like she was only gently chiding the plant for its habits.

“They feel like plastic.” Hunk felt along the petals of one of the flowers. Its surface was smooth and stiff, but not unyielding; it flexed downward when pressed. “Or rubber or something. Where are they from?”

Allura rolled her lip between her teeth. She let her hand fall from the flower and folded her arms around herself again, but she smiled up at Hunk to break the tension in her own posture.

“Farysia. It was a neighbor to Altea.”

“Oh.” Hunk felt his shoulders sinking. A sad, grim thought occurred to him and he wondered what Altea’s sun looked like presently with no habitable planets orbiting it, but strings of debris. “It must have been beautiful.”

“It was.” Allura’s smile softened. She took a small pair of scissors from a work bag on her shoulder, and she trimmed a couple of the golden flowers. She kept one for herself, and the other, a smaller bud of sparkling, folded layers, she tucked into Hunk’s headband just above his temple. While this caught Hunk off-guard, it raised her spirits enough to get a real grin out of her. “Perfect.”

“Wait,” Hunk laughed, reaching up to touch the flower. The corner of his vision could still catch some of the petals’ shimmering light. “Wait, what is this for?” He wondered if it looked like the _sei_ that women would wear behind their ears back home. At least Allura had placed the flower at his right temple instead of his left; married women would wear the flower to the left, and single women to the right.

Shay didn’t really have ears to tuck a flower behind. Maybe she’d slip one into an earring? No, weaving a crown would be better. Hunk had to stop getting caught up in that little mental image.

“The _kookueyri_ \- the glassflowers - symbolize travel and enlightenment in Altea.” Allura had a habit of straightening her back and standing a little taller whenever she talked about Altean culture. She really did look like a princess with her utility bag, hair falling out of her bun, and proud smile on her face. “To give one to a friend is to wish them a safe, productive journey, as well as a safe return home.”

Oh, that was entirely different from the _sei_. Hunk clasped one hand over his mouth, because his heart _wasn’t_ fluttering and his eyes _weren’t_ welling up, not even a little bit. But he decided that if there was ever an appropriate moment to pull a space princess into a huge, tight hug, that was it. When he followed through on that thought, Allura yelped, laughed, and returned the hug just as warmly.

“I’m looking forward to seeing Earth,” Allura said when they stepped back. “It helps me to know that the other paladins… You all have so much waiting for you back home.”

It was a kind thing of her to say, but even though she was maintaining that smile, Hunk heard the bittersweet ring in her words. Allura and Coran, and now Romelle, had no home planet to return to.

“Were there a lot of glassflowers on Altea?” Hunk asked quickly. He couldn’t let that sadness sit. Allura let out a small, surprised chuckle, but she nodded and stepped away from the tree to continue their search for food. Hunk walked with her, keeping an eye out for the late-ripening fruits their scans had promised.

“They were one of the first alien life forms brought back to Altea when we first began to explore our solar system. They grew so prolifically that we had to keep them in greenhouses. Still, we would find them popping up nearly everywhere. And when we went to explore planets further out, the glassflowers always found a way to come with us. Then we came into contact with other societies who became enamored with the flowers, and they spread exponentially.”

“Makes sense where they got their symbology.” Hunk smiled wryly and toed at some broad, odd-looking leaves along the forest floor. “They’re travelers.”

“Exactly so. Intrepid little things.” Allura appeared to still be making an attempt at foraging, but whenever they would pass a stalk of the glassflowers, she would tap the petals and watch it sway and catch the sunlight. “I haven’t heard much about Earth flowers. Do you have any particular favorites, Hunk?”

“Where do I start?” Hunk was more than happy to pick up on this topic. Allura deserved to have something to smile about. She needed a new home to look forward to, maybe one with new flowers she would like. “Roses are the most popular. Lilies are nice, too, and daisies. And I love hibiscus flowers. They’re really colorful and they make a nice tea.”

He nearly stepped right onto a patch of the leaves they had been looking for. Hunk knelt down, and Allura followed him, digging into her bag for a shovel. Hunk gripped the plant by the stalk, wiggled it, and then pulled it straight up, roots and all. When the tiny scanner of his glove recognized the tubor as edible, he grinned with pride. He dusted some of the dirt off and bagged it, and Allura was already digging out the next one. It was nice, working with this simple, single-minded focus, not even needing to exchange words regarding the task. Over the course of their trip, this foraging system had become the new normal for the paladins.

“But my favorite,” Hunk continued, “are frangipani. Plumerias. They come in all these colors, and they’ve got five petals that all overlap in this spiral. My mom grows the trees outside the front door - white ones with yellow centers.”

“They sound beautiful.” Allura glanced up at him between their harvesting. Her smile was softer than before.

“They are. They smell really sweet, and they show up in Samoan art all the time.”

“Samoan?” Allura blinked, polite and blank.

“Where I’m from. Samoa. It's a country on Earth.” It occurred to Hunk that with the way Allura talked about Altea, countries didn't seem to be a thing. She was the princess of a whole planet. “It's on a group of islands. It's small, but it's happy.”

“Oh! I loved the islands on Altea. Many of them were active volcanoes, though.”

“Yeah, that's sort of how it is on Earth, too,” Hunk laughed. “There's a lot of volcanic rock around the islands. And volcanic soil is really rich and fertile.”

“That's where the most beautiful flowers grow.” Allura twirled her glassflower between her fingers, and she found a crease in her sleeve to tuck the stem into. “I’m sure it's good for the frangipani.”

“That's what my mom says.”

“Do they symbolize anything?” Allura asked, looking back up to him. “Do humans ascribe meanings to plants?”

“Yeah. Seems like a pretty universal thing. It's nice, seeing different cultures care enough about something to give it their own meanings.” Hunk smiled and dusted off another tubor. He thought they looked like sweet potatoes. They were wild-growing and not cultivated to be very large, and each one was about the size of his thumb, but they were supposedly packed with nutrients. “Different cultures on Earth have different meanings for the same flowers, too. But in Samoa, frangipani represent springtime. You know, life and new beginnings and stuff. But for me personally, they're just… home.”

The quiet that hung between them for the next moments was peaceful. They found all of the small vegetables in one patch that they were willing to take, and they moved onto the next one.

“I can't wait to see them,” Allura said finally. The sad tension in her shoulders, at least in that moment, was entirely gone. She had dirt on her hands and warmth in her eyes, and Hunk felt like he had done something right.

 

Hunk sometimes forgot what the star-spattered void of space looked like with a horizon. It was different, seeing nothing but open, eternal night sky from a window. In the bustle of setting up a camp and finding simple supplies on every planet they stopped at, Hunk would neglect to even look at the stars. Most often, he was tucked away in the warm safety of the cot in the Yellow Lion’s cargo bay. Even when the paladins and crew slept out in a circle by the fire, the edges of the sky were hidden by trees and foliage.

The mountain made a difference. From their vantage point, Hunk could step out near the edge of their little camping ground, a plateau cut out of the side of the mountain, banked by tall snow-topped trees and framed on one side by a frozen-solid stream, and see miles of forested terrain dipping below the cliffs and the night sky above it. In the middle of it all, a crisp line of far mountain silhouette cut the realms of trees and stars in half. If Hunk stood there long enough, he could see the stars slip behind the distant curve of mountain range. The horizon gave them something to rest under.

“It looks like the Cascades.”

Hunk looked to his left to find Shiro stepping up beside him. Like the rest of them, he was wrapped up in a dense, grey emergency blanket and holding it closed over his chest with one hand, and the blanket seemed bulky enough to suggest several more layers underneath. The light from the camp behind them was faint at this distance, but Shiro’s white hair caught each fragment of it, and Hunk could see the shadows along his eyes and cheekbones. The tips of his cheeks and nose were red from the cold. It left an aching pit in his stomach that Shiro could look so tired and aged and simultaneously so young and wounded.

“The Northern Cascades?” Hunk asked, and Shiro nodded.

“My family lived in Washington for a couple of years.” There was no further explanation. Shiro put a smile in place and didn’t look away from the edge of the far mountains. He might have been looking for something to say; the silence that settled in was balanced on something that wanted to tip over, but Shiro didn’t have the energy to give it a push.

He’d had days like that since coming back to the crew. He was eager to help, determined to work and train with the rest of them, but his body and mind were still recovering. Usually he was able to handle it, giving guidance and pulling much more than his own weight - and with only one arm - but by the time everyone would settle down, he was burned out. He had collapsed a couple of times toward the beginning.

Once, all too recently, the team had woken up to Shiro’s voice on the comms. They were set to activate automatically at the sound of a voice, leaving Shiro no privacy when he had woken up sobbing in terror. He had asked Keith where his arm was.

So Hunk didn’t fault him for being a little tired.

“Where are they now?” Hunk prompted him, and Shiro looked to him and blinked.

“Who?”

“Your family.”

Shiro stared at him, and then he pulled that smile back on like armor.

“We have a family grave in Japan.”

“Oh. Shiro, I’m…”

“It’s alright.” Shiro took in a deep, fortifying breath and looked back out to the valley of trees, and his shoulders drew closer together under the blanket. That small smile stayed in place, more of an anchor than a mask. “You’re from Samoa, right? Does your family still live there?”

Hunk wondered if he was rubbing it in. He still had a family to come back to. But Shiro had asked in his genuine, friendly way, and he was eager to fill the conversation with something positive.

“Yeah. My mom’s from American Samoa, but we live in the Independent State. There’s lots of us. Brothers, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, the whole shebang.”

Shiro’s smile gained some warmth and touched his eyes. “They’ll be happy to see you again.”

“Well, you too,” Hunk reminded him confidently, because it was obvious. “Everyone’s gonna be waiting for you to get back.”

Shiro turned his head to look at Hunk. He blinked once, cleared his throat softly, and then looked back out at the mountains.

“Do you… _have_ someone waiting for you?” Hunk ventured a little more personally, wondering what he had said wrong.

“No,” Shiro said quietly. Hunk was gathering up another apology when Shiro sent him a glance and a tiny smirk. “But I'm sure Shay will be happy to hear from you, once we can contact the coalition.”

“Everyone keeps bringing up Shay!” Hunk cried, scandalized, but was secretly delighted that Shiro could tease him like an older brother. More than that, it was good to hear Shiro laugh again. It bubbled out of him with puffs of frost in the air. “Yes, I admire her very much, and she has very kind eyes, and she may have had a priceless impact on me in my journey as a paladin, but--”

“Hunk, it's not a bad thing to look forward to seeing someone again.” There was the warm, supportive smile they all had missed. “Sometimes that's what gets you through.” Hunk was afraid to ask who had gotten Shiro through. There didn't seem to be anyone left in his life. But Shiro pulled the blanket close around his shoulders, and this time, he was enjoying the warmth instead of fighting off the cold. “For me, in Black, it was all of you.”

It took Hunk a moment for that to sink in. When it did, the remaining darkness of the conversation lifted away with a butterfly in his stomach.  “Oh.”

“Yeah.” Shiro grinned out at the landscape, and he attempted to rub some warmth into his neck without letting go of the blanket. He dropped one corner of it anyway and cursed under his breath, and Hunk couldn’t laugh at an amputee.

“Could you see us?” Hunk had to ask, and Shiro looked to him instead of fussing with the blanket. “While you were in Black?”

“Sometimes. I tried, but I couldn’t talk to anyone until you found me on Olkarion.”

“We didn’t really find you,” Hunk reminded him, quiet and guilty.

“No, you did.”

Hunk had seen that look of pride on Shiro’s face before. He usually wore it for all of them, the whole team together. Being the sole witness of that smile came with all the flattered happiness of being called someone’s best friend.

“The four of you found me,” Shiro insisted. “I couldn’t get through to any of you, but you found me. You don’t know how much hope that gave me.”

“I thought you used mental exercises and meditation and stuff.”

“Well, that was part of it,” Shiro snorted. “But that wouldn’t have counted for much if I thought I’d never see you guys again. If I didn’t have someone to miss. But I did. It was like… waiting through winter.”

“And now it’s spring?” Hunk raised an eyebrow. Shiro laughed and managed to get ahold of the stray corner of the blanket.

“Well, maybe not _here_ ,” he allowed. “And it should be around November on Earth right now. But it’s on its way.”

Hunk caught onto his meaning and grinned.

“And so are we.”

“Exactly. And so is Earth, and so is your family.”

A light at the end of the tunnel. A goal within reach. A happy payoff to visualize. Hunk took a deep breath of hope and realized how badly he had needed it.

“And so is Shay,” Shiro added, and Hunk scoffed, loud and shrill.

“Look, I--” Hunk crossed his arms over his chest, making his blanket fold over them. Shiro waited, eyebrows raised expectantly. “I… might be looking forward to seeing her again. A little. Maybe a lot. If she’s okay. I hope she is.”

“Well…” How did Shiro still sound so calm and sure of himself? Whatever his secret was, it was threatening to make Hunk feel better, too. “When I see someone again, I’d always rather be able to tell them I never gave up on them.”

“What about when you don’t get to see them again?” Hunk knew it wasn’t a kind question, but it was an important one.

Shiro didn’t fake a smile. It was small and worn, but it was real.

“Then I miss them honestly. But either way, if you care-- _care_.”

That wasn’t such a bad thing to admit. Hunk shrugged heavily and smiled at the valley below.

“I care a lot.”

“I know you do, Hunk. That’s why we love you.”

Well, Hunk hadn’t known to brace himself for that one.

It wasn’t eerily close to the last words his mother had said to him before he’d left for the Garrison, or anything. And he wasn’t blinking away tears; his eyes were just cold.

Okay. It was, and he was, and his eyes were suddenly too hot. He cared.

“Have I told you I’d die for you?” Hunk asked, needing to cover for himself.

“Please don’t,” Shiro urged him, and his laugh carried the tiniest cough. That alone seemed to be enough to summon Keith and all his ire, because not a second later, he was stomping toward them through the snow behind them.

“What are you two doing out here?” he scolded them, and Hunk almost laughed at the shamefaced look on Shiro. This man had been the Black Paladin, and he looked like a kid caught with his face covered in cookie crumbs.

Better yet, Keith _was_ the Black Paladin, and he was so bundled up in every warm article of clothing he had, and so puffed up with anger, that he looked like a Pomeranian. The team had quickly realized that Keith got really, really pissy when he was cold.

“You’re both going to freeze. Come on. It’s warmest inside Red, so we’re all bunking with her tonight, and Lance made us something for dinner. Shiro, _where is your scarf_?”

“I’m fine, Keith.” Shiro started to laugh again, which only made him cough harder into his wrist. When the coughing fit rattled him too much and shook the blanket from his shoulders, Hunk reached out and grabbed it, and Keith made to support Shiro. Hunk took his other side, and they wrapped the blanket back into place around him. Hunk noted that he had never truly seen Shiro embarrassed before he mumbled, “Come on, guys, I don’t need a walker just yet.”

“Nah, we’ll haul you around in a palanquin,” Hunk suggested brightly. Shiro coughed and wheezed with laughter, and he patted at Hunk’s arm.

“Stop-- making me-- laugh,” he begged as they led him back toward the lions, all seated in a circle around their camp.

“You’re gonna get pneumonia,” Keith chided, but the anger was gone from his face. There was only gentle concern, the kind Keith didn’t know he excelled at. “Allura said your immune system’s shot right now. You have to be more careful.”

“Yeah, yeah…” Shiro relaxed enough to focus on his steps. One after another. Hunk and Keith helped balance him wherever a step was weaker. Hunk saw him smiling, as warm as spring.

 

Each one of them sat up straight in their seats when the alert chirped through each cockpit. Hunk’s back complained; he had been sitting poorly again, and flying for days at a time didn’t exactly leave him time for yoga sessions. Traveling the open black of empty space also left little chance for mental stimulation; after very little time, all of the scenery looked the same, and Hunk wished for a moment to stretch his back and his brain. Pidge was the first to speak.

“It’s not a distress signal.” Half of her sounded relieved. “It looks like a locating signal from a coalition communications base.”

A good sign, but too little to be comforting.

“They’re not answering,” she said only seconds later. That could mean anything. Hunk tried to be an optimist, but the grim possibilities crept forward.

The Green Lion lurched forward, past the corner of Yellow’s window, following the direction of the signal. Keith barked after her.

“Pidge!”

“They’re close,” Pidge snapped. The Green Lion was disappearing fast. “You guys can catch up.”

“Lance,” Keith growled, and Red responded reflexively to dart after her.

“On it.”

While the rest of them hurried after Pidge, Red all but vanished to close in on her. Lance really had grown into Red’s intense speeds and tight turns, and bare seconds later, Pidge was snarling over the comms.

“Lance, out of the way.”

“Pidge, hold on.” Lance’s voice was soft. “I know.” She cut him off.

“No, you _don’t_.”

“Pidge.” Hunk was talking over the comms before he could even think of how to start. “We do. If Matt’s there, we’ll find him together. If it's a dead end, or a trap, we’ll find it together.”

He had pulled up Pidge’s video feed on his dashboard, as well as Lance’s. Her jaw clenched, her mouth pursed tight, and her eyes refused to meet his corresponding screen.

Her hands eased up on Green’s controls. In moments, Black, Blue, and Yellow caught up to the other two.

“Thank you, Pidge.” Keith’s tone was gentler this time. “Keep trying to contact them. See what we can find out.”

“Fine.”

It took another hour to reach the source of the signal. Considering the fact that the lions traveled at nearly a lightyear per minute, Hunk wasn't sure he would have called their destination 'close.’ He also wasn't sure how the lions and most other alien spacecraft seemed to shatter the concept of relativity and protect their passengers from the more tragic effects of time dilation and changes in acceleration, but he had managed to compartmentalize that and largely stop worrying about it.

He had used to worry about coming home to their solar system only to find that they had traveled trillions of years in the future, but Coran had mostly assuaged those concerns with an explanation that sounded a lot like magic. That wasn’t good enough for Pidge, though. Shiro managed to reassure her a small amount, living proof that someone could be gone from Earth for over a year, travel great distances away and back in an alien vessel, and return for the most part at the same age that he would have been if he had never left. If anything, he had aged more slowly than Earth on his journey to Kerberos rather than on the Galra ships he had been transferred between. And living in the quantum abyss had put Keith and Krolia two years ahead of the rest of them, but they had to be assured that Earth wasn’t too greatly out of alignment with their own relative passing of time.

This concept had terrified Pidge for months when they had first left Earth, even after Coran’s explanation that “modern” spacecraft would never neglect to counteract such a “basic” factor as time dilation. She and Hunk had pulled multiple all-nighters in the castle trying to locate Earth on any kind of scanner, just to check on it. Just to have proof that it was still there.

PIdge had only cracked once. They had been on the floor with their equipment sprawling around them, chipping away at the task of comparing the gravitational effects of time from several nearby solar systems at once. They couldn’t be sure that Earth itself wasn’t living at a very different rate from them anyway due to different gravitational pull.

“My mom’s all alone. I didn’t say goodbye.”

And she had cried, small and hiccuping and stubborn into her bundled-up jacket, and then into Hunk’s arm.

She had only been satisfied when she had found Matt. He appeared only a couple of years older than when she had last seen him. Not aged by thirty years. Not long dead. Living within the same timeframe as herself. After that, finding Sam had reassured her entirely.

Hunk managed not to worry as much as Pidge did. Don’t get him wrong; the delicate fabric of timespace had him anxious for his family, but most of the time, he was happy to take Coran’s and Shiro’s reassurances.

Whenever it still started to get to him, Hunk would divert his attention to his nieces and nephews. He had doubtlessly missed a few birthdays. Instead of worrying, he would plan on what extra presents he would get each of them to make up for his absence.

It was a meditation for him on the way to the signal’s source. It was cut short when Pidge spoke up again.

“That’s-- It’s not a planet. It’s a ship.”

Planets were what they had come to expect for friendly bases of operation. For Hunk, at least, he had come to associate large spacefaring command centers with the Galra. This vessel wasn’t Galra - not remotely - but it was a piece of crap.

The metal was a warm, dirty grey. The shape of it was clunky and bulbous, the structure of a cargo ship that prioritized storage volume over speed. And it was broken open like a piñata on one side. Crates and shrapnel hung loose in space. Most of the pieces were still spinning and straying further away.

Hunk almost wished he couldn’t hear Pidge whispering. No, no, no.

“I’m not picking up any life signs on board,” Lance reported. “But it looks like a couple of the emergency shuttles are gone.”

“They’d be short range. Everyone, spread out and run a sweep for the shuttles.” Keith was already picking a direction of his own to search. “Survivors first, then wreckage.”

Another hour was devoted to scanning the surrounding area for any heat signatures, any life signs, any fragment of an escape shuttle. They split up the area between the five of them and combed through it, but nothing was found. Everything was cold.

“There’s always the chance they got picked up by another vessel,” Hunk suggested. “I mean, that’s better than finding a wrecked shuttle, right? Better to not find one?”

“Oh, so it’s better to not know?” Pidge snapped.

“ _Pidge_.” Keith was using his leader voice. Hunk sat up so straight that something in his back popped, and Pidge fell into a resentful silence. “Everyone converge back at the wreckage and get ready for EVA. We still haven’t found the exact source, and we need to know what happened here.”

Hunk was tired of living in his armor, but it did make EVA prep much easier. All he had to do was grab his bayard, slip on his helmet, and wait a second for the tiny click and hiss of even pressure. The little adventures out of his lion weren’t comfortable - the air tasted recycled and his suit didn’t counteract the cold as much as he’d like - but he would live. Yellow purred in the back of his mind, the way a mother would ruffle her child’s hair when sending him off to school, and Hunk patted the doorway of the cockpit on his way out to the airlock.

The paladins touched down together on the cusp of crumpled metal where the ship appeared to have been blown open. The rupture opened up to a hallway, and exposed wires and shreds of insulation drifted out from the walls, back and forth from their tethered ends, like the blast had gone right through an airlock and ripped the whole structure open. There were no sparks. No flickering lights. Everything was cold.

“I’ll check the communications log on the bridge.” Pidge was already sending herself through the hall, and as Hunk followed her, he felt the usual directionless vertigo sink into his stomach. Space didn’t have up or down; it wasn’t like swimming. It was too easy to get lost in it. He pulled himself through the hall-now-tunnel, and he glanced back at Keith to give him a thumbs-up, a silent ‘I’ve got her.’

Keith nodded back at him. “Lance, Allura, let’s split up the bottom level and work our way up. No one goes more than a room away from the next person.”

While those three worked through the bones of the ship, Hunk stuck right behind Pidge. For minutes at a time, there was only the sound of breathing over the comms. As Pidge and Hunk navigated through the gutted halls to the most sensible location for the bridge to be, no one said more than two words together at a time. The search team mumbled small directions to each other, affirmatives and negatives.

Pidge didn’t say anything, but she did peek into every room they passed through. Almost all of the doors were cracked open unevenly, like the impact of the ship’s death blow had knocked them out of alignment. Hunk’s flashlight barely revealed anything. Even motes of dust were few and far between, like the vacuum of space had sucked all of it out with the air. There was ice on one wall, crawling up into a vent and frozen in a spiked tendril, with shards of it glittering nearby. Hunk imagined the impact, a cup spilling, then absolute zero sweeping into the halls like a plague.

Hunk had to pry the doors to the bridge the rest of the way open. He slipped into the room, and Pidge followed silently, but went directly to the center console beneath the cracked window. The screen on the console showed the regular pulse of a tiny green light.

“We found the bridge,” Hunk reported in. “Looks like the control panel’s got a very small amount of auxiliary power left. Must be where the signal’s coming from.”

“Be careful,” Keith said. “I don’t like this.”

“You don’t like anything,” Lance scoffed.

“That’s not true.” Keith sighed. “We’ve just gotten too many fake distress calls in the past. And this would’ve been the place for a distress signal, but it’s just a shorter-range locating signal, which is a weird thing to leave going. It feels weird.”

“They likely didn’t have time to send out a distress signal,” Allura said.

“Can everyone be quiet for a minute,” Pidge mumbled. Everyone fell silent.

The quiet breathing over the comms came back. Everyone focused on their own tasks. Hunk maneuvered himself closer to Pidge in the zero gravity, and he watched over her shoulder while she picked at the control panel. She was surgical with it, careful and clearly scared that she might shut the whole thing down for good if she made a mistake. She didn’t usually need so much caution, but Hunk could guess what was going through her mind: if she slipped up on this, she might lose her only chance to find her brother again.

Pidge’s world was divided into two major categories: things that could possibly get her family back to her, and things that couldn’t. She was still clinging to hope that this was the former. Hunk hoped with her.

The console blinked alive. Pidge and Hunk froze, afraid to scare it away. The system took a moment to gather itself, and then the screen flickered and jumped to something Pidge could navigate. She worked with the fragile software, still silently amazed that she got the hardware working, and attached her own datapad and translator to follow it through a few prompts.

“I found it.”

She sat up straight. The lines went even quieter, if that was possible, while everyone stopped to listen. Hunk read the display alongside her dictation of it.

“This was five weeks ago. The last log reads… _Engine nonfunctional. Life support failing. All crew and passengers to board escape pods. Galra warship inbound. Coalition vessel XHG29 inbound._

_Coalition vessel XHG29 within range. Escape pods launching._

_Coalition vessel XHG29 to destroy Coalition vessel MQU62._

_Galra warship inbound._ Then it cuts out. The ship we’re on is MQU62.”

“They got out safe.” That was all Hunk could gather from it, anyway.

“They had to destroy their own ship to keep the Galra from using it.” Keith seemed to appreciate that on some understated, morbid level. “The Galra probably called the wreckage useless and moved on. Can you use the signal and boost it, Pidge? Vessel 29 might still be in range.”

“I don’t know if I can. If this tiny little blip was the only signal we were getting out here, it’s not gonna reach a vessel that’s probably hauled ass out of the galaxy already. This system’s probably packed with Galra scavengers.” Pidge dug deeper and tried anyway. “Oh.”

“What?” Hunk leaned closer.

“They left the locating signal on,” Pidge said slowly, “on purpose. They hit the back of the ship and destroyed the cargo and engines, not the bridge. They needed the signal to distract the Galra while XHG29 probably shut off everything but life support to get out of the area quietly.”

Lance sighed loudly. “Alright, Keith, you weren’t wrong. Every signal we get is fake.”

“Wait,” Pidge hissed, shutting him up again. “I found a list of crew. If they made it out safe, maybe… Maybe we can spread out, look for them a little further, boost our signals to find 29.”

Hunk gripped a bar alongside the bottom of the control panel. Pidge had hooked her feet under a stationary chair to keep herself from floating off, and Hunk settled himself beside her to read it with her. She skimmed through it too quickly, then went back to the top and worked her way through it name by name.

She went through it four more times. Over a hundred names. None of them were Matthew Holt.

“No names we know,” she finally reported. Her voice wavered. Hunk put a hand on her shoulder, and she turned her visor away from him.

“Okay,” Keith said. He was using his softer voice again. “We’re almost done scouring the rest of the ship.”

“Five minutes, then back to the lions?” Hunk suggested when he felt Pidge’s shoulder tremble.

“Five minutes,” Keith agreed.

Pidge shook harder. Hunk looked at her more closely in alarm, but she didn’t make any sound. It took him a moment to realize that she had muted her mic.

He followed the rule of silence, but Hunk couldn’t leave her suspended there. Nothing was grounding her. Nothing was protecting her from the grip of absolute zero but the thin, functional but uncomfortable insulation of her suit. He wrapped his free arm around her and pulled her closer.

Pidge latched onto him. Her tiny hands dug into his shoulders. She hid her visor under his chin, and her small frame twitched and spasmed with miserable, silent sobs. Hunk held onto the structure of the control panel and rubbed her upper back.

She was dropped back into the same hopeless task that had driven her mad for the past year. Her brother was lost in the universe again.

She was going to have to accept going back to Earth without him.

Hunk’s family was on Earth, waiting for him, and Pidge’s was scattered. They were pieces she kept trying to glue back together but couldn’t seem to stick.

All Hunk could do was stay with her. She needed all five minutes to stop crying.

Everything was cold.

 

* * *

 

 

Even after the Galran occupation on Earth was ended, the planet was left bleeding to death.

National borders meant nothing anymore. There was no governmental structure to speak of, and there were no meaningful guidelines on trade or resource distribution. Agriculture had been overhauled by the Galra to suit their siege tactics, and the leftover system was broken and unsustainable. The planet’s population had crashed. The Galra had only spared as many lives as they required for labor, and the people that remained were displaced or truly homeless.

Everything had to be built from the ground up. Recovery was slow and painful. It wouldn’t have even been possible without the coalition.

The Zaiforge canon bases were stripped for materials, and the remnants were memorialized. The first things to pop up were field hospitals and makeshift neighborhoods, and as more extraterrestrial crafts landed, they brought more supplies and applicable skills. Painstakingly, the recoverable cities across the globe were cleaned up and rebuilt, and Earth’s traumatized survivors began to crawl back into civilization. Though humanity’s missing billions couldn’t be replaced, the gaps were filled and comforted by the coalition’s settlers.

Markets cropped up in the streets. Schools were built. Families were reunited. That was Hunk’s favorite part, using the lions to shuttle people to their loved ones, even across continents.

The paladins made their own recoveries. When Hunk had woken up in the Garrison hospital after the fight for Earth, he had made a feeble attempt at blaming his unending tears on a broken leg (his _left leg_ , no less), but then had cried in his parents’ arms for an hour. They had cried with him.

Shay had stepped into the room the same day, and Hunk had cried again. He had always known that she was brave and sweet, but the brazen way that she sought out anything he appeared to need and then the care in which she delivered it to him had his heart clenching. When she had come to visit him the next day, his parents had excused themselves to go to lunch. With a little privacy, Hunk had worked up the courage to hold her hand.

His tibia had been set right and on its way to healing, but it was tender for a long time, and he was still walking with crutches. That didn’t stop him from walking around the hospital courtyard with Shay to listen to her recounting of the past four years. Or exploring the new town flanking the Garrison. Or sneaking out with Lance to bring back flowers and candy for everyone. Pidge was allergic to flowers, but they brought her a bag of gummy flowers to make up for it.

Lance insisted that his injuries were the least grievous. The lions hadn’t been able to protect their paladins when the crashes happened. They had hardly absorbed any of the shock. It had been up to their armor to protect them, but against an impact on par with that of a meteor, armor was little consolation. Lance had bruises all along his right side and back, and the doctors had worried about his spine until he had woken up with good responses. He’d fractured his ribs, but he would behave most of the time and not exert himself too much.

Pidge had dislocated her shoulder, but she had managed not to fall out of the seat of her cockpit during the crash. Aside from her shoulder and some nasty but entirely temporary bruises, she had recovered quickly. She would have gotten out of bed and back to work sooner, but Colleen Holt had demanded just a few more goddamn days with her family in one piece.

Like Hunk, Allura was walking with a bit of a limp. She had fractured her hip, and she was a stubborn patient who respected the human doctors but trusted only Coran. All of her treatments had to be vetted by him, and though it seemed like it would have been irritating, the doctors had actually been relieved to have some guidance on treating an Altean.

Keith had been thrown. Black had slammed into the concrete of the Garrison launchpad, and Keith had been found sprawled along the far corner of the cockpit, unconscious, helmet cracked. His head and mouth were bleeding. With a broken arm, internal bleeding, and a respectable concussion, he took the longest to wake up.

Krolia never left his side, even when each of them would come to visit him. Kosmo had made his place beside Keith’s gurney, and he would often sit up with his head on the mattress to lick at Keith’s hand. Shiro was there half of the times Hunk came to visit, talking with Krolia and Kolivan, or simply sitting next to Keith and quietly telling him the news whether Keith was awake to hear it or not. For the first several days after waking up, Keith would drift briefly back into consciousness, but exhaustion and painkillers would drag him back down before he could articulate more than a mumble. Keith’s mumbles had a whole spectrum of meanings, ranging from pain to gratitude. His first full word after the the crash, Hunk heard down the grapevine, was “Mom.”

The market didn’t have any plumerias. Floral arrangements weren’t exactly the top priority in the middle of global reconstruction, but they did have some demand. Flowers were symbols of respect and ceremony, sources of morale, and botanists and florists alike were happy to recover what they could. For Hunk, flower shopping with Lance was the fun part.

They picked white lilies for Allura. They were extremely dignified, elegant flowers, and she deserved something so lovely to welcome her to Earth.

Shiro had been surprised to receive purple irises from the two of them. When he had asked, confused but flattered, Hunk had told him it was to thank him for coming back to fight for them so many times. Lance had shrugged and said, “They look kinda regal.”

They hadn’t bought any, but Lance had picked up a sunflower and held it out to Hunk. “It’s you,” he’d explained simply. Hunk had told Lance that it suited him more, and Lance had put the flower back, laughing.

And Pidge got her gummy flowers.

Picking flowers for Keith was harder. Most of Hunk’s fun came from watching Lance squirm over the decision, and he only teased Lance for being so typical _after_ he’d paid for a trio of red roses. Lance almost threw the flowers back, but Hunk pushed him along back to the hospital, halfway encouraging him and halfway thriving on Lance’s mortification.

Upon their arrival to Keith’s room, the patient was asleep again. Krolia watched them curiously from the bedside chair while Lance made his way around to the side table to set down the slim vase. Hunk watched from the foot of the bed as Keith sighed and blinked his bleary eyes open. Lance froze in place like he was hoping to throw off a predator with poor eyesight.

Keith squinted up at Lance and mumbled his name curiously. Hunk thought the guy looked like crap, but Lance clearly had a different opinion. Lance’s face bloomed with red, and he very nearly knocked over the vase in his hurry to get out of the room.

“They didn’t have any black ones,” Lance shouted over his shoulder on his way out the door. Keith managed to sit up halfway and stare after him, baffled, and Krolia turned her wide eyes on Hunk, mouthing a very clear _what the fuck just happened?_ Hunk broke down into laughter.

Later, Lance just had to tease Hunk back.

“Aren’t you going to get flowers for your girlfriend?”

Hunk smiled and didn’t deny the title that time, and Lance radiated pride. Still, Hunk gave an awkward little shrug on his crutches.

“They don’t have the right flowers here.”

 

It was months before any of them got a break. Even when Keith was up and at it again, they were all kept busy with reconstruction efforts, both physical and political. As dust started to settle, though, it was clear that their families needed to find more permanent situations. Everyone’s thoughts turned back toward the meaning of coming home.

Keith’s family wasn’t going anywhere without him. Krolia even went with him on his expedition out into the desert to see if his house was still there. Miraculously, the house had been ignored entirely by the Galra for four years, and it was neglected, but undamaged.

Pidge’s family members were each involved with the reconstruction in one way or another, so it made sense for the four of them to stay together in the Garrison. The house Pidge had grown up in had been in a majorly populated area before the occupation, and when she heard it confirmed that the house had been destroyed, she had pursed her lips tight, nodded, and remained silent for the rest of the conversation. With so many other efforts in progress, Sam and Colleen couldn’t even think about building a house for themselves. They already had living arrangements in the Garrison, and thousands of other families were still living in pop-up tents. The Holts were content without their own home as long as they were together.

Lance had his family, and Hunk had overheard him ask them whether their house was still standing. Lance had been answered with quiet sympathy and touches on his cheeks. His shoulders had tensed, and he had pulled his nearest loved ones into a tight hug. Hunk had heard him say brokenly, “I’m so glad you made it out.”

Hunk counted himself the lucky one. His family was safe, and they had answered with uncertainty when he asked about their home. He decided on a quick and impulsive trip in Yellow to check for himself.

The last time he had seen the islands from above, he had been a nervous teenager on a plane to the Garrison. At nineteen, he was technically still a nervous teenager, but it was nice to be flying himself _from_ the Garrison.

He had brought his parents with him for this particular piece of reconnaissance. His dad couldn’t stop laughing in amazement at the lion’s mechanical complexity - “I didn’t teach you _any_ of this” - and his mom stared at the dashboard while he piloted Yellow with an easy, confident familiarity. This was his lion. He loved Yellow, and Yellow loved him back.

“This is what you’ve been doing all these years,” she mused, sounding heartbroken. Hunk looked up at her, wondering what could possibly be wrong, and then it hit him.

He was finally home, and she was getting a look inside the war machine her son had been cheating death in while he had been missing.

His mom was right there, with one hand on his shoulder. Hunk took his hand off the control to rest over hers, and he leaned closer to her in what was probably a very childish bid for affection. He felt her other hand fussing with his hair like on his first day of school, and when she kissed the top of his head, he was happy enough to glow.

That was when Yellow swung over Upolu.

Other survivors and coalition members had already begun rebuilding Samoa. It was a small place to settle, but it had fertile soil and it was peaceful. It was green and beloved. It was _the same_.

Hunk pulled back on Yellow’s velocity to avoid breaking the sound barrier and shattering anyone’s windows, and he stared. He felt his parents doing the same on either side of him. He could already pick out a few new buildings, a few moving vehicles, proof that life was coming back to the island.

Yellow swept over the stout Mount Fiamoe, layered in vegetation made only braver and more vibrant by the volcano. Hunk dipped them lower to graze Yellow’s claws in a sunken pool, a secret pocket of the sea tucked deep into the trees. When the green ground disappeared out from under them and gave way to teal ocean, Hunk flew Yellow across the surface of it. He could _feel_ Yellow’s tail dragging across the surface of the water, and he chased the curve of the cape.

He was laughing. His mother wiped his cheek. He was crying.

And there it was, sitting patiently on Hunk’s favorite jut of land, his corner of the island.

It was their house.

 

Their little kitchen had never been this busy. Hunk had felt the need to quintuple each recipe, which made for some interesting demands for their oven. It was a good thing Hunk knew how to manage the space he had. The _oka l’a_ only needed to be chilled. The pie crust had already baked, and while the _laulau_ had its turn in the oven, Hunk was whipping meringue to put on top of the pie, keeping an eye on the multiple pans of frying chicken on the stove.

Admittedly, he hadn’t planned out any of the dishes to relate to each other. He was usually a stickler for composing a meal like a good, balanced painting, but tonight he just wanted to churn out as much comfort food as possible. Everyone deserved it.

The whole family - all six paladins, former and present, and their closest friends and relatives - were on vacation. Hunk’s family home wasn’t huge enough to sleep everyone, but they did have five rather large lions parked along the beach. With effort, creativity, and enthusiasm, all mostly coming from Lance, the cargo bays had been repurposed into the coolest little resort bunks that sleeping bags, military cots, and pillow-blanket forts could buy. It was like a big sleepover on the beach, and all of the food was coming from Hunk’s kitchen.

While he cooked, he stole glances out the window and the open side door, where his and Lance’s nieces and nephews chased each other across the sand, laughing and shouting. Pidge and Matt were playing fetch with Bae Bae, Lance was swimming as far out into the ocean as his mother allowed him to, and Shiro was relaxing on the porch, educating Coran on the drinks he preferred to nunvil. Coran took to them alarmingly well. Allura was learning from a gaggle of children how to make sandcastles.

Shay was studying the blooms on the frangipani tree.

Hunk was in real danger of letting the chicken burn. He looked away from the window and flipped the pieces quickly, and when he turned around again, Keith was standing on the other side of the counter with a towel on his head. He had apparently made some effort to dry himself off before stepping into Hunk’s kitchen.

“You were asking for me?” Keith was speaking to him, but he was taking in the orderly chaos of the kitchen. There were appetizers already set out on the counter, and he looked nervous, like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to have any. Hunk grinned, leaned over the counter, and pushed one of the plates toward him. It was stacked with slices of pineapple.

“You don’t have any fruit allergies, do you?” Hunk checked.

“I guess we’ll find out.” Keith flashed him a crooked smile, picked up a slice of pineapple, and popped it into his mouth. He chewed cautiously, and then Hunk got to witness that sublime moment when Keith’s eyes slipped shut and his shoulders sank. “Oh my god.” Keith reached for another slice before he’d swallowed the first.

“Take it easy,” Hunk laughed, but he allowed Keith to take another. “These are going in a pie.”

“You’re making pie?” Keith asked this like Hunk had just given him God. “Hunk, it smells so good in here. I’m gonna stay in here.”

“Nope. You’ll eat all my ingredients. Put on some sunscreen and get back out there.”

“Oh, come on.” Keith reached for a third slice, and Hunk pulled the plate back. “I can help cook!”

“You can help cook tomorrow. You’re like twenty-two now, right? Go drink with Shiro.”

“What?” Keith was laughing and following the pineapple just for the game of it. “I’m not gonna drink, Hunk.”

“Then go bring Lance some sunscreen,” Hunk suggested mildly. “He tans really dark, but he’ll burn if he pushes it.”

“What?” Keith’s voice cracked. It was golden.

“Just saying. You haven’t seen Lance surf yet, have you?”

Keith’s eyes wandered back toward the door.

“You’re really busy in here,” Keith said slowly.

“That’s right. Dinner’s in half an hour.”

Keith pulled in a deep breath, watching the door. His hand darted out and snatched one more slice of pineapple, and he bolted back outside. Hunk wasn’t even mad about it.

The sky was turning pink when everyone filtered back toward the house for dinner. Their huge party ate everywhere from the kitchen bar to the dining room to the porch, and everywhere, someone was laughing.

Uncle Filo told him he’d made the _laulau_ right. It was all Hunk had ever wanted to hear. Hunk was still preening about it by the time people were digging into the pineapple pie, and he stood outside by the frangipani tree with his own slice, watching the sky change colors. The air smelled like the blossoms, and it lulled Hunk somewhere back to the middle of his childhood, to the point in time where he’d felt safest.

“You’ve got a gift,” his mother’s voice said behind him. Hunk felt a smile stretch over his face and stick there.

“Yeah, it’s called an awesome mom.” That made her laugh, and she hung her arms around him. Hunk was happy to lean into the hug, but she insisted on turning him to face the house.

“I mean it, Hunk,” she said. “Look at them. You did all of this.”

He saw a family. His dad was talking to Lance’s dad, gesturing largely in the telling of a story. His sister-in-law was trying to wrangle his niece, but also trying to balance his crying new nephew in her arm. Coran stepped in to help, and the baby stopped crying when he held him against his shoulder. Allura and Romelle were talking with one of Lance’s sisters, and between the astonishment and confusion of culture clash, they worked themselves into fits of laughter.

Someone had given Lance a guitar, and he just couldn’t resist being That Guy. He sat on the porch steps and strummed softly, taking time to refamiliarize himself with the instrument, until he noticed that he’d caught Keith’s attention. Lance smiled directly at him, picked out a distinct melody on the strings, and started to sing. Keith choked on his drink - pineapple juice, Hunk knew it - and tried to head the other way to escape, but Shiro redirected him, patted him on the back, and pushed him toward Lance. Keith stood there helplessly, looking down at Lance looking back up at him, and Hunk had to watch the stupidest, shyest smile take over Keith’s face.

Pidge was sitting beside Matt, and either one of them had a blanket over their shoulders. They had climbed up onto a rock beside the house, and they were chatting quietly, but Hunk could see Pidge’s smile from fifty feet away. Her constant worry was finally thawing away.

“You brought these people together. _You_ brought them home.”

That praise was more than overwhelming. “I mean, I helped,” Hunk allowed feebly.

His mom snorted, gripped him by the side of his head, and kissed his cheek. She was wearing a new necklace with a large gold pearl.

“You’re so full of love. That’s why we love you.”

A short laugh welled up in his throat, and he wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand.

“Love you, Mom.”

“Love you, honey.” His mom looked up and away from him, and she laughed under her breath. “Come inside for ice cream later, okay?”

“Will do.” He watched her walk away, confused, until he saw Shay stepping toward him. Her hands were behind her back, and she smiled when he met her eyes. He hated to be so typical, but he and Shay were standing under his favorite tree, the sunset was beautiful, and he was finally home, and all he could get out was, “Hi.”

“Hi.” Her sweet voice was playful, and it was going to take him a long time to get used to that. “I wanted to tell you that your home is beautiful.”

Hunk beamed. “I think the people make it.”

“I think they do,” Shay agreed, and she glanced back toward the house with a smile. “I have something for you. Your mother showed me how to make it.”

She pulled her hands from behind her back, and she presented a string of frangipani flowers. They were sewn together with care and looped at the end, and the radius was small enough to make a crown rather than a necklace. Hunk’s tongue was made of cotton.

“Oh,” he breathed.

Shay bit at her bottom lip, and her hands started to try and hide the string of flowers. “Is it alright? Or am I overstepping?”

“No,” Hunk laughed. “No, this is… It’s beautiful, Shay. Thank you.” He took the crown gently, and he studied it under the lamppost light by the tree. It really was well-made. Shay looked pleased with herself, and her face only brightened when Hunk smiled up at her. He took a moment of initiative, reached up, and settled the crown on her head, over her horns.

“I missed you,” Hunk admitted.

He had learned that it was really funny to see Shay flustered. Her mouth popped open, and she took a moment to sort through all the words she wasn’t going to use. She finally decided on grabbing his hand, the one human display of affection in her repertoire.

“I missed you, too.” She swallowed hard. “You were missing. You, the lions-- you vanished. And I never stopped missing you.”

That knocked the wind out of him. He blinked up at her, smiled wider, and squeezed her hand.

“You can stop now,” he told her gently. “I’m home.”


End file.
